Ubuntu 10.04 random freezes, no idea why...

[Edward78]

Ok I have Ubuntu 10.04, rarely it freezes & I find no mention of it in messages (log file viewer) I see it says something about recovery in it after I reboot, but no mention on from what. This happed with my old memory, memtested & found 2 errors by test 6, this memory, no errors. I see on the Ubuntu forums some have probs. with freezing, no sources mentioned. Is there a way to get a list of hardware, from mem. it might be not exactly right. I just downloaded hwinfo, how do I open it, no shortcut was put anywhere? I have a .html file with detailed hardware info, how can I get it to anyone?? I have the hwinfo info also, but it is to long to cut & paste. I just found tis in messages from today wlan0: IPv6 duplicate address fe80::213:f7ff:fee5:83e0 detected! could that cause freezes?

 

[Edward78]

How often does it freeze? If its frequent then just run with the wireless disabled for a bit and see if the problem goes away.

Are you overclocking? What video card are u using?

EVGA. nForce 650i ultra Intel Core 2 Duo Wolfdale E8200 2.66GHz
6MB Cache Dual Core 1333MHz 4 Gig DIMM-DRAM NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS with 512 DDR3 memory (PCIe 1.00 x16)

Rarely freezes.

No overclocking, I do have a Logitech Dual Action USB & USB headphones.

The memory is 2 sticks, does that matter? Some on the Ubuntu forum said test the sticks individually.

 

[Edward78]

Doubt it
Most this really should do is kill your network connection.

Was this a clean install or an upgrade from a previous version though? I've got a 10.04 install that I upgraded from 8.04, and something really isn't right somewhere in the upgrade process. No idea where, and I haven't get round to properly troubleshooting it yet, but I've seen one complete freeze, and one instance where the xorg ate the CPU completely until I killed it via SSH.

-Leezer-

Clean install, ya there is a post on the Ubuntu forums about 10.04 freezing, others are having prob. also. No linked cause, is there a app. to kill frozen apps. for Ubuntu like windows task manager? Sometimes when it freezes on reboot the wireless is gone & I have to unplug my dongle then plug it back in to get it back. It is a SMC EZconnect 802.11g.

 

[Edward78]

gnome-system-monitor does the same job as Windows task manager

Is there a key combo to bring it up?

 

[Edward78]

Ok, I figured something out. Just the mouse freezes, I was on Youtube, the pointer froze & the video was still playing. It Is a MS USB Intelipoint Optical, not sure exactly what type. I think it is just the normal one. What is a GUI app. for Gnome I can download to tell me hardware info??

 

[Edward78]

By any chance, it doesnt generally happen when you try powerdown the machine does it?

Nope, just at random points.

Long shot, but try doing the following when the mouse freezes in the console;

sudo modprobe -r usbhid ; sudo modprobe usbhid

How do I navigate without the mouse? SuSE/OpenSuSE never had a whole system freeze with it. Oh and on boot up it took a few secs for the mouse to come on/get power to it. Where do I get a hardware info app. that will open within gnome?

 

[Edward78]

I'd try disabling all the kernel power management features, that's definitely worked in my case
A freezing mouse is also one of the first symptons; If leave it, everything will gradually lockup if you're seeing the same issue.

Open up a terminal, and run this:

sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst

It'll prompt you for your passsword, and the you'll then be in the grub config.
Scroll down, and find the 'Default Options' setting. Add this to the end of the last line:

noapic nolapic acpi=off

Save and close this file.
Finally, run this:

sudo update-grub

This will update grub with the new options you just set. Reboot, and they should be applied.

menu.lst is blank, when I open it, plus I can't find it in the folder when I open it in Gnome.

 

[Edward78]

Rot, you're using Grub2 then, I forgot that they only changed it for fresh installs
Try this instead:

Open a terminal and run this:

sudo gedit /etc/default/grub

Find the line 'GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT', and add this to the end of it (Between the " "):

noapic nolapic acpi=off

Save and close the file.
Finally, run this:

sudo update-grub

-Leezer-

This look right?

 

[Edward78]

Looks promising
Save & run update-grub as per my post.

I'll add the usual disclaimer here though-
You're editing the bootloader, and while this should be painless, if you're unsure of how to recover from this situation, please be wary!

-Leezer-

It has been done, all appears to be still working. Well it froze twice, first time had to reboot found no mention of a crash in messages or syslog, then a few minutes minutes later another freeze. Is it the FS it is EXT4? I will try that usbhid command next freeze. Maybe the nvidia driver?? Just the mouse freezes, I can still scroll with the arrow keys, if a video is playing it still plays. Last freeze was a complete freeze. Frozen screen, mouse & keyboard, nothing in any log files messages/syslog/xorg all no mention of a crash. It has something about the system recovering. There was something about orphaned inodes. Some freezes are mouse only, some are complete, if I try that modprode command with no freeze will it maybe help? Someone on the ubuntu forum said it might be the network manager.

 

[Edward78]

Very much sounds like the standard freeze to me.
Orphaned inodes aren't anything much to worry about, crop up sometimes when there's been an unclean shutdown.

I'm not on EXT4 or grub2 for that matter, so I can't really help too much on that front.

Not sure what else to suggest if disabling ACPI hasn't worked; IIRC you've seen the massive Launchpad bug, and that's about all that's come out of it.
You could try reinstalling with 9.04 or an alternate distro (I'm very fond of Mandriva), but at the minute I think we're waiting for Kernel upstream to provide a proper fix.
One of the advantages, and for that matter problems of Ubuntu is that they implement new software and changes very very quickly, and these things sometimes crop up.
Disgusted that this has come up on a LTS release though. If it wouldn't be such a pain to recreate the whole config for this system, I'd be on an alternate distro now.

-Leezer-

Ya, I had SuSE/OpenSuSE for years, with no OS freezes, just apps rarely & I just killed them. I love the ease of Ubuntu though, my dad just upgraded actually to 10.04 going to see if he freezes, 8.04 froze on me also, my dad had 8.04 to, but it never froze on him. our systems are the same accept the brands of mice, I have a MS, him Logetch. If it was the mouse, just the mouse would freeze when it froze right? If PMs worked I would ask for a place to send a file with my hardware info for you to look over, don't put a email here evil ones could spam you.